Entry Four: Finding Common Ground

I shall do my best to report on the final two venues for the Verses and Curses Tour.

To wit:

Several nights ago we… I am starting to use the term “performed,” as these live-reads took the shape of something more akin to a play than the commonly perceived misery that is a poetry slam. Several nights ago we performed at the almighty, all-crusty Clermont Lounge in Atlanta, Georgia. Here’s an odd thing about hitting the road with your art—friends you’ve known for fifteen years will flake, while complete strangers will drive three hours, through rain and wrecks, to sit in barroom twilight alongside you.

Finding common ground: When the active-duty, Army grunt and the long-EAS’d Marine laugh about the same military hootenanny—or when a stripper old enough to collect social security tells you after you read, “I too know what it’s like to bare all on stage.” Indeed, brother. Indeed, sister. The Clermont was…well, a hand grenade; small but packed one hell of a punch. Fun. Seedy. Ruckus. All things the readers and attendees seem to drape themselves in when time and fate allow.

Days later, we limped into Cooper City, Fl. There is a new-found respect for bands who do this shit for a year. Granted, they likely don’t have to frantically switch hats—reader, shirt-salesmen, auto mechanic, cook, back to reader (looking for parking), but new-found respect nonetheless.

Finding common ground: When a Marine-laden crowd in a Coast-Guardish bar hear an Army Ranger’s words and say it could have been their own. When Nick, AKA Charlie Moose, joins us on a bare floor, sidestepping the entering and exiting patrons, and no-shit steals our show and doesn’t believe it afterwards. Crowds for this tour have been trim, but that little (and predictable) detail is more than compensated by their sheer enthusiasm—at its zenith after the show, when the drinks flow and the hilarious feedback commences.

Welp, that’s it, I guess. Tour done. Hopefully the first of many, but there’s no crystal ball here. Not for things like this. Thank you to all who came out, and to those who helped spread the word.